The joke, I suppose, is in comparing an Etch-A-Sketch — a simple
child’s toy — with something as sophisticated as a fully-featured
grown up desktop word processor. The real joke is that we
continue to tolerate applications with bloated user interfaces,
feature-creep, and enforced-upgrades. Worse than that, we actually
encourage these applications by shelling out for them, year after
year.

As a consequence, many desktop applications are now stuffed with so
many controls, widgets and toolbars that you can’t see what you’re
doing. And all you wanted to do was write someone a one page
letter. Adding insult to injury, your word processor even
gets in your way of doing that:

It looks as though you’re writing a letter. Allow me to interrupt
and reformat it.

A new generation of applications is appearing: applications which are
clean to look at and simple to use. I’m sure the simplicity derives
in part from the constraints imposed by having to work within a web
browser (within multiple versions of multiple browsers, even), and
in part from the fact that these are applications whose features have
had less time to creep. But I also like to think that some very bright
people have actually started to realise how to best to design
interfaces and interactions. It’s not about bewildering or dazzling us;
rather, it’s about staying out of our way.

I’m talking about applications like Google,
whose classic search page is brilliantly simple. Or
GMail, which quietly revolutionises what an
email client should look like — and gets it right. Google
Maps is another favourite.

With a web-based application back-ups become someone else’s
problem. Upgrading between versions also becomes someone else’s
problem — you may not even notice many upgrades. You’re always using
the latest version and your friends are too.